Why ENS
 

ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Allen County Public Library has been a cornerstone of the Fort Wayne community for many decades.  The institution is a symbol of community pride and resources of one of the oldest cities in Indiana.  The library is an early adopter of new technology such as electronic resources, and people databases that date back to pre-colonization in the New World.  Web access and dial-up access to the library was implemented several years before.  The library infrastructure boasts WAN connectivity to all of its 14 locations.

Allen County Public Library (ACPL) is continuously striving to find better and faster ways to deliver its vast store of information to its patrons.  Technology has played a major role in distinguishing  ACPL from your average community library that shelves books to be checked out.

Two years ago a project was put into motion to make available the many subscriptions of CD-ROM media to the patrons of  ACPL.  Employing a CD-ROM Jukebox that housed approximately 150 CD-ROMS at one time accomplished this.  The Jukebox was connected to ACPL WAN and made available to dial-in and Internet patrons.  This solution only gave access to CD-ROM titles that were loaded in the Jukebox.

The Challenge: Authenticating a Patron through a standard web browser and giving them access to all resources available regardless of user location, available bandwidth, type of client hardware or operating platform.

The technology department had solved the problem of delivering information on the ACPL WAN by using CD-ROM servers,  Jukebox's, and connections between all of the branches using T1 communication lines.  The solution although working for internal users within ACPL walls, was lacking in scalability and was accompanied by high communication cost.  It also posed the problem of how to deliver product/performance to the at-home patron and how could these patrons be approved or denied this information. 

The Jukebox solutions only allow access to CD-ROM Titles that have under 150 CD's.   As the information database grows the cost of accompanying the title with bigger CD-ROM servers and Jukebox's become cost prohibitive and more difficult to manage.  The need for an all-inclusive solution that allowed for a quickly growing data store became evident.

IMPLEMENTING MICROSOFT PRODUCTS:

NT 4.0, IIS, SQL v7.0, Visual InterDev, Visual Basic v6.0, Transaction Server

The Web site was developed using Active Server Pages (ASP) created with Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0 as the interface, a SQL Server 7.0 database as the backend data store and a COM component  created with Visual Basic 6.0 running in the middle tier.  When first accessing the site, the user is presented with a logon ASP page prompting the user to enter their PatronID or choose to logon as a Guest. Once logged onto the site, the user is presented with a list of the available published applications.  Upon clicking on a specific application, the web application dynamically builds an HTML page that includes a Citrix ICA  and allows the user to work with the published application.

ENS: Bringing it all together

By using the seamless integration of Microsoft Products, ENS was able to build an inclusive solution that not only addressed the current needs of authenticating patrons and delivering data, but also created a solid foundation for future deployments of electronic media and information.  The solution has set apart the ACPL on a national level, and maintains the level of excellence that ACPL patrons have become accustom too. 

With this foundation in place, the possibilities of utilizing this existing product base for other uses such as patron usage and resource tracking becomes a simple matter of scalability ensuring that the installed technology will be a tool that is used far into the future with little redesign costs.

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SOLUTION OVERVIEW

COMPANY
Allen County Public Library is a large non-for-profit community library with one of the largest electronic genealogy datastores in the country.  It consists of 14 branches and over 260,000 patrons in the greater Allen County area and around the United States.

CHALLENGE
The Allen County Public Library has Terabytes of electronic media on CD-ROM that they subscribe to and would like to make available to all of their card carrying patrons either through dial-up, internet, or internal access.  Because of the volume of family tree information and the tendency of the electronic data to be updated often, it is imperative that the delivery of the data be scalable and easy to maintain.  The patron must be authenticated as a Library patron before access to these resources can be granted.

SOLUTION
 The Allen County Public Library implemented Microsoft SQL Server v7.0, IIS, Microsoft Terminal Server v4.0, Microsoft Visual InterDev, Active Server Pages, Visual Basic v6.0, and Microsoft Transaction Server.  Enhanced Network Solutions Group of Fort Wayne, Indiana, a Microsoft Solutions Provider Partner provided the product integration services. 

BENEFITS
 The “Patron” is quickly authenticated against an SQL database using the Patrons library card number.  When access is granted, a dial-up, internet, or internal user is able to gain access to a Load balanced Microsoft Terminal Server containing published CD-ROM media and programs pre-selected by the Allen County Public Library through a common Web browser such as IE 5.0.  Using Citrix Metaframe the information is delivered quickly and independent of the client's machine strength or OS encompassing the diverse clientele that is accessing the information.

This solution allows the library to expand its patron base from a county scale to a national or global scale.

The CD-ROM media is published to the Terminal Servers for easy updating and speed of delivery.  It also allows for great scalability by adding Hard drives to the array and servers to the farm when needed.